翻译考试历年中级口译真题(8)_第6页

Questions 11~15 
     First the hamburger connection; now the songbird connection. The first link goes like this. Citizens of the United States are hungry  for beef, especially in the form of fast  foods such as hamburgers, frankfurters and the like. Yet beef has been one of the most inflationary items in the consumer's weekly shopping basket.

      So the US government has authorized imports of so  –  called cheap beef from central America—beef raised on pasturelands established almost entirely at the cost of tropical forests. By trying to trim a nickel off the price of a hamburger, the US has contributed, albeit unwittingly but effectively and increasingly, to the massive loss of forests from southern Mexico to Panama.

      Now the second link.A vast  throng of North American songbirds spend their winters in Central  America and the Caribbean－about  two thirds of all woodland and forest species, totaling around half of all land birds breeding in North America.

      But the migrants have been running into trouble, according to Dr Eugene S. Morton and his colleagues at the  Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. When  several billion birds leave North America each autumn, they find, on arriving in their wintering grounds of central America and the Caribbean, that their forest habitats have been succumbing to the machete and the match.

      As a result,fewer birds are heading back each spring north of the border.Smithsonian scientists notice that species numbers are declining at rates between one and four per cent a year.The prospect is that there will be major reductions in  throngs of  forest  – dwelling  migrants. According to Professor John Terborghof Princeton University, “We are, in effect, about to play observers in a massive experiment in which there will be dramatic alterations in the relative population sizes of numerous common species.” 

      Ironically, it is precisely at the time of the songbirds' return that a number of insect species are likewise putting in a reappearance in North America. They tend to be at key phases of their life cycles, as larvae, etc which  leave them unusually vulnerable to insect – eating birds. The Smithsonian scientists speculate that the insect populations have thus far been held below levels at which they prove harmful to agricultural crops, through the predation  pressures of  huge numbers of  songbirds returning over the horizon at just about  the right time. If, however, the songbirds continue to decline, the insects could, within the  foreseeable future, start to enjoy a population explosion every spring－which could mean bad news for US farmers.

11.According to the article, the US government has                            .
     (A) arranged for forest land in Central America to be cleared
     (B)  seen a massive fall in the consumption of hamburgers
     (C) bought up grazing land for cattle in Central America
     (D) made it possible for Americans to buy meat at reduced prices
12. The article suggests that                     .
     (A) about 50% of winter birds around the Caribbean are from North America
     (B) half the forests in Central America have been destroyed in the past three decades
     (C)  a  third  of  all  North   American woodland birds migrate  to Central  America or the Caribbean
     (D) very little forest land in the United States is inhabited by birds
13. The expression “succumbing to the machete and the match”(Paragraph. 5) is a metaphor for .
      (A) being returned to a balanced ecology                     (B) losing their fight against time
      (C) being cut down and burnt                                      (D) being ploughed into the ground
14.Why are the numbers of birds returning north declining annually?
      (A) There are fewer forests in the US for them to return to.
      (B) A huge experiment is being conducted on bird populations.
      (C)  Tropical forests can support greater numbers now.
      (D) Their southern habitat is being drastically reduced.
  15. The bad news for farmers in spring might be an increase in                           .
        (A) the number of songbirds                              (B) the number of insects
        (C) the size of larvae                                         (D) the price of beef